"Lock and load, boys. It's time to see what you're made of."
In rural farmland, a group of farmers protects their territories from monstrous invaders by fighting them in mechanized suits. Based on the short story of the same name by Steven Lewis.
Neil Kaplan voices Hank and G.K. Bowes voices Beth.
Tropes:
- Alien Blood: The Dee Bees have green blood
- Aliens Steal Cattle: The first thing we see the DeeBees do after breaking in is to go after the cattle. Although it's less "stealing" and more "violently devouring".
- All There in the Manual: It's never explained just why the aliens are called DeeBees in the episode - the short story it's based on makes it clear that the name is short for "dimensional being", while the aliens aren't clearly traveling through dimensions in the episode itself.
- Ambiguous Situation: Are the farmers on an alien planet, or are the Dee Bees on attacking Earth?
- Bad Vibrations: A close up on Hank's coffee cup as it throws ripples when the rift opens.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- Jake comes back to save the day by providing backup ammunition for his fighting pals.
- Later Beth reveals she's got a cannon in the silo that shoots Just in Time at the giant DeeBee chasing Hank.
- Bittersweet Ending: They've driven the enemy and killed the big boss bug, but the herd is lost, they've lost one of their own, their gear is mostly destroyed and the final zoom-out reveals the war is far from over, with bugs swarming all over their domes.
- Bottomless Magazines: Subverted: during the fight, Crazy Mel's mech runs out of missiles, Hank's mech runs out of bullets, and Jake's mech completely runs out of ammo. New ammunition is sent in, Jake has to abandon the fight for a moment to reload, and he buys time while both Hank and Mel reload themselves.
- Bug War: The farmers have to fight hordes of large bug-like aliens referred to as "DeeBees" that attack everything that moves.
- Brick Joke: The one-cow herd that Hank mentions moving closer to the house partway into the short can be seen peacefully munching grass in front of the house at the very end.
- Chekhov's Gun: Jake's ugly scarecrow, which Hank couldn't manage to uproot, proves a fine way to anchor his mech when attempting to hold down the big alien.
- Cigar Chomper: Crazy Mel is never seen without her cigar.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: The farmers are just tired of their alien neighbors.
- Conveniently Timed Attack from Behind: Helen saves Beth from a DeeBees that's actively jumping at her with a shot from her shotgun offscreen.
- Determined Homesteader: All of the farmers, as the Reveal Shot shows, since they're staying put on a blue planet in the shape of Saturn while countless aliens assail their dome shields.
- Disney Death: The close up on Hank's coffee cup at the end strongly implies that he got killed during the attack. Then the next scene has him alive and kicking.
- Everything Makes a Mushroom: Jake's mech's reactor exploding causes a giant mushroom cloud that the distant Beth and Helen clearly saw.
- Feed It a Bomb: Unable to penetrate the big DeeBee's armor, Hank uses his mech to wrench open its mouth so Beth can shoot a cannon round right down its throat.
- Good News, Bad News: After the first attack, Hank tells Beth that he's moving the cattle herd as asked. What he doesn't get to is that the herd has been reduced to one cow inside his mech's claw.
- Hellgate: How the breaches appear at first.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Jake blows himself up when surrounded by monsters. Hank tells his wife to shoot down the big monster's throat while he's holding it open, but he actually survives.
- It Has Been an Honor: "Well, Hank, it's been good knowin' ya!"
- Kill It with Fire: Hank's mechsuit has a flamethrower, among other weapons.
- Last Stand: The three mech fighters try to hold off the hordes for their families to make it to the bunker.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Crazy Mel's mech specializes in this, firing a massive swarm of little homing missiles into the horde.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: Hank and Beth are a white man, black woman couple, whose marriage was a source of much anger for her mother. However, it's never stated if her disapproval was for racial reasons or otherwise.
- Mini-Mecha: The farmers' homemade mechs are approximately the size of large farm equipment such as a tractor or combine harvester.
- Mission Control: Beth, who coordinates the defense and the evacuation as a Voice with an Internet Connection.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Hank tells Jake to get back to the bunker without them while he's behind them reloading as Hank and Crazy Mel are getting swarmed. Jake instead goes over to toss them the ammunition and cover them with his reloaded weapons. When Jake's mech himself gets covered in aliens and implies to them he's going to start his Self-Destruct Mechanism to explode his reactor, Hank still tries to pilot his mech over to help Jake before Jake's mech blows up.
- One Head Taller: Hank is a head taller than Beth and twice as wide.
- Reveal Shot: The short ends with an Astronomic Zoom that shows the farms are in terraformed domes on an alien planet that the DeeBees completely swarm the outside of.
- Southern-Fried Genius: All protagonists got Southern accents and clearly have the technical skill to make their own mechs. With Jake seeing himself as a bit of a modern-day Da Vinci.
- Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Downplayed with Hank and Beth - while she is definitely thinner and more conventionally attractive than the portly Hank, Hank is hardly ugly otherwise. Jake and Helen, however, play it painfully straight.
- Unknown Character: When Hank, Jake and Crazy Mel are about to face the swarm of DeeBees, Beth mentions that Zing's cut off and the Camel brothers are pinned down, leaving the three to face the swarm for themselves.
- Whole-Plot Reference: It's a horde of ravenous alien monsters vs. determined space hicks in robot suits. Neil Kaplan even voices Tychus Findlay in that series.
- You Had Us Worried There: Beth is worried when Hank doesn't respond after Jake's mech detonates. Then he comes back online.
- Zerg Rush: A lone DeeBee can be capped with human-sized small arms, but there's thousands of them. The big one, on the other hand, is so heavily armored that most weapons just bounce off it.
